Environment/economy contradictions and Aviation Growth

The Aviation Economy is growing in the UK at rate of around 7% per annum. If this rate continues it will seriously undermine the UK policy target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60% from1990 levels by 2050. Rising levels of carbon dioxide emissions from the expansion of the aviation economy, plays to a national and especially a local agenda of economic growth, but paradoxically is occurring in tandem with policy measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The policy conflict provides the first of our environment/economy contradictions. Indeed our empirical investigation finds the instituted aviation production-consumption system shot-through with such contradictions. We will identify others, and ask how each finds uneasy and temporary settlement, situation the discussion by offering theoretical development of Karl Polanyi’s‘double movement’. The aim of the project is to understand aviation growth. We offer a conceptual framework to inform this understanding starting from Karl Polanyi’s notion of economy as instituted process and drawing upon the work of Alan Warde and colleagues on consumption as a collection of integrated practices, to offer an integrated production-consumption approach, as part of the economic sociology project to move away from either production-only, or consumption-only accounts. To illustrate the operation of processes which we consider to provide explanatory leverage on the question of why aviation is growing so rapidly, and importantly why it is likely to be difficult to curb by voluntary or fiscal means, we use material from depth interviews with representatives from the aviation ‘industry’ and frequent leisure flyers, the latter to explore the practice, meaning, and significance of ‘getting away’.